Babe Ruth was the greatest player in New York Yankees history, and he has a lot of great company on the list of the franchise’s all-time best.
Since officially becoming the New York Yankees in 1913, this team has won more than 9,400 games, 40 pennants and 27 World Series. A total of 22 players (and managers) have had their number retired by the Yankees.
As such, there were quite a few candidates for best of the best, and it was challenging to whittle this list down to just 10 players.
Because we’re comparing starters, relievers, batters and fielders across different eras, wins above replacement (WAR)—via both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference—was the primary metric used to rank these legends from the Bronx. However, it’s far from a precise ranking based on that one data point.
Also worth mentioning: Players were evaluated exclusively on the Yankees portion of their careers. For guys like Lou Gehrig and Mariano Rivera, who spent their entire career in pinstripes, that little nugget of information is irrelevant. But there are a few players who would have ranked much higher if we weren’t disregarding a significant number of years played.
